Hiroshi Sugimoto "Lightning Fields"

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At this exhibition, Hiroshi Sugimoto, who has a deep knowledge and a wide practice that extends from antiquities and writing to spatial design as well as Noh theater stage production, will present his newest works (2009) from his Lightning Fields series, begun in 2006.

As the title indicates, the works in this series are experiments in exposing artificial flashes of light directly onto photographic plates. Sugimoto channels the achievements of his predecessors in the field of lightning studies - Benjamin Franklin, who showed that lightning consisted of electricity during a kite experiment in 1752, Michael Farraday, who discovered the laws of electromagnetic induction in 1831, and Fox Talbot, one of the first inventors of photography - and recreates their discoveries in a darkroom, repeating a series of processes in order to verify them with his own eyes. The results have already been exhibited at Sugimoto's "History of History" exhibition, presented at two museums since last year.

The lightning bolts that frolic across the surface of the film evoke organic associations for most viewers, but for his newest pieces Sugimoto has taken his experiment one step further, attaining a mode of expression that is even more subtly detailed and quiet, incorporating a characteristic sense of desolation into the evidently coincidental composition of these works. Also on display are the original negatives mounted on light boxes.